Larry Fink: From $100m loss to building BlackRock

To me, this is the beauty of the country. We are a mess, but we move forward. And when you think about that, this is one of the reasons why we, as a country, are able to create incredible companies, innovation, entrepreneurialism. Look at the two of us. Well, Larry, one of the things we're doing with this podcast is meeting people at places that are important to them. And here we are at BlackRock headquarters in Hudson Yards in Manhattan. And I know that this is an important place to you, but your beginnings are in Southern California. Tell us a little about your journey from there to here. Well, actually, I never saw snow fall before growing up in Southern California. And, um, I knew I wanted to do something different. Uh, I knew when I graduated undergraduate, I knew I did not go to, wanted to go right to work. And I was able to go right from undergraduate to grad school. Um, and that afforded me two more years in school to make a decision of what I wanted to do. Uh, and through that, that extra two years of getting my MBA, um, you know, it opened up so many different horizons. And actually at that time, that's how I learned more about Wall Street. I had no concept of what Wall Street was. But I mean, my father was a very, uh, active investor for his whole life. And he left a pretty big mark on me and the virtue of long-term investing. But, um, but through that two year process of getting my MBA, I did a lot of soul searching, maybe, maybe there's something more than beyond Southern California. Um, and I met a couple of people in the industry and I went out, uh, in January, 1976 for a bunch of interviews at different firms of Wall Street. Um, I ended up at first Boston and that's what I actually saw snow fall for the first time when it was interviewed here in January, but importantly, I just became, um, really excited and engaged about the opportunities to be in the, in the, in the markets. And this was right after, um, you know, in 1974, that's when Wall Street, uh, was, was given the notice that they, that you can't have fixed, fixed price, uh, commissions. And it was pretty much of a pretty stark recession for a lot of the Wall Street firms. And by and large, most firms that even at that time did only advisory business, he did not have a balance sheet. And for those history buffs and related to Wall Street in 1976, I think the sum of all the Wall Street firms, uh, capital might've been $200 million. I mean, it was a very much of a cottage industry. Uh, the training program that I started at first Boston had 14 people. So it was really small and unique, but, um, I selected first Boston because they wanted me to be in trading and that required me to be in New York. Um, and it was a very difficult first year of coming to New York. Um, it was very different than Southern California. But over the course of a year, I, I came to love New York city. I came to love the meritocracy of, uh, of the firm and the ability to grow. But also I, uh, I found the whole idea of capitalism and what it can do and how, you know, everyday people can build a life and a career, uh, in this. And if you, uh, are able to, uh, grow and grow and learn and, and build the, you know, the sky's the limits. And so it became a very quick journey for me, but importantly, I knew really within the first 90 days of being in New York and, and taking this job and trading, um, that it was something that I was fascinated, something that I actually really enjoyed. Um, and then I actually became pretty good at it. Yeah. It seems like the results would indicate that now you, I, we met last year. You told me a little about how the seeds for black rock came out of first Boston and the team that you developed, the leadership team, what, how did black rock evolve from your days there? And how does it influence your thinking around the way you run black rock and your leadership team? Well, it really goes to my almost 12 year journey at first Boston. Um, I was, you know, I started at 23, uh, right out of grad school. Uh, at 27, I became the youngest managing director in the firm's history. I ran a department, as I said, was really successful really early. At 31, I was on the executive committee of the firm. Um, and at 34, I was a jerk and, you know, the journey was we were making lots of money way beyond any imagination. We were children in a candy shop. It was just, it was crazy times. Um, you know, the whole book of liars, poker talks about first Boston and Solomon brothers, the war that we had, uh, and the competitive edges that we had between each other. Um, and we were making so much money, but we had really inadequate risk controls. We had inadequate knowledge of how we were, the risk we were taking in, in making all that money. And I can look back and said, we probably should have been fired for making too much money because the amount of risk we were taking to make that type of money was probably not a great risk reward, but because there was no risk analytics there, the firm actually gave me more capital to put more money to work. And then obviously in 1986, the second quarter after a record first quarter, we lost a hundred million dollars. And then the firm woke up to the amount of risk we were taking. Now today, a hundred million is not that big of a loss back there. That was a lot of money to lose. And I, I actually, Peter never forgave myself the fact, you know, that I allowed myself to be put in a position, uh, to taking on this type of risk without the knowledge of the type of risk we were taking. And it was easy when you were making all the money and when you're right, but when you have a huge levered balance sheet, as we learned over the years, especially in the great financial recession, when you have that much leverage, if you're wrong by a little bit, it could be the, you know, death, you know, in terms of position. And, um, I just could not believe I allowed myself to not understand what we were doing and how we were doing it. And, um, so that was June, uh, 1986. And it literally took me a year and three quarters to think about what did I want to do next? But I knew from that experience from June to September and try to mitigate and correcting the problem. And I, I just, my soul departed the firm because getting back to the foundation of BlackRock, um, I believed in team. I believe when there is a fire, we run in it together, we hold hands and we put the fire out together. And that was the whole foundation of what I thought partnerships about. And I actually felt very isolated and a lot of finger pointing and all that stuff. And, and, and when you make a, made a lot of money, then there was a partnership. When you lost money, there was no partnership and no support. Now my team, you know, I was running all fixed income then, and the team was very supportive and all that stuff. But it was the, you know, we had the glue, but above me, there was very little in terms of compassion, assistance, one team, one organization. And I knew I was going to leave, but I did not know what I wanted to do. And I had many different opportunities to go back to another Wall Street firm and do that. I said, I'm not doing that. I'm not repeating this. I wanted to learn something else. It was very clear to me as we were building new products, um, in the mid eighties, we had more knowledge of those products and the weaknesses and the strengths of these products than our clients. Our clients were so dependent on us to help them understand it. And it was very clear to me that I said, you know, if we could develop our own risk analytics on the, on the buy side and really understand how the risk we were taking, we can make, you know, we could create a new buy side firm. And so I, I'd like to say the ashes of my failure at First Boston was a fertilizer of the beginnings of BlackRock. And you still have the same partner group you started with. Is that correct? There were eight partners who joined. I mean, I, so I resigned on a Tuesday. I stayed there for a couple of weeks to help out a transition the weekend. Right after I resigned, I had an open house in my house and I literally had 75 people work for me. What are the, what I was going to do? And can they come with me? And I, you know, I had the ability to hand choose the type of people we thought would be helpful in starting this company. And fortunately, two out of the eight people came from technology. So the whole idea was to develop our own risk analytics to understand what we were doing. And, you know, that was the beginning of a, of a great journey. Now I had two entrepreneurs who were willing to help finance me back in 1988. Now, you know, we had the, we had Black Monday just four months earlier, you know, in 1980, October 87, and which was the largest decline, I think, you know, up to the great depression. So it was not something that people would readily do, but I had two entrepreneurs who were willing to finance me to start the company myself. And I honestly, that whole journey for that year and a half trying to decide and the lack of partnership that I was experiencing, I did not have as much confidence as I should have to just start my own company. I did get to know Steve Schwarzman and Pete Peterson when they started Blackstone in 1986. And they just, and they, cause they used First Boston to help raise money. I helped them raise money for their first fund. And I got to give Steve a lot of credit. He had more trust in me than I had in myself. And, you know, I was asked to become the fourth partner of the Blackstone group. They provided the capital for us to start. And that was the beginning of the, of the platform. We were very independent from Blackstone, but our name was Blackstone in the early years. And, you know, from the first month when we started the firm, people came to us and said, we want to help you. And within the first 80, 90 days, we were making more money than we were, than our expenditures. I mean, it was just, it was a big surprise and a lot of it was just the reputation that I had. But, you know, we wanted an advisory client, the first and foremost of a big savings loan that it was acquiring another savings loan, they needed somebody to help them analyze all the, all the, all the portfolios. And we did that. Then in a very short period of time, we were able to raise our first dollar. And that was not in the United States. The first client we ever had on the asset management side was a, was a client in Japan that we had prior relationships with. Then probably the greatest surprise to me was the support I had from all my competitors at First Boston and how they came to me and how they wanted to help out. And so within, within our first four months as a firm, we were able to raise like over a $500 million closed end fund. And that was the Wall Street firms trusted us, trusted us that even though we didn't have a track record, they trusted with what we were doing, the risk management. And so quite frankly, we were making money within the first 90 days of the firm and we never looked back. And here you are, you're the, now running the largest asset manager in the world. And you're considered a thought leader. You write extensively, you travel all over the world. When you're formulating your thoughts, there's an optimism that comes through, but you do have a lot of concerns around society in general. How do you see the world today? What do you think the key issues, key problems are? What are you optimistic about there? I am an incredibly long-term optimist. Human beings solve problems. We solve problems by identifying the problems. And so what people get so mixed up in, if you read the newspapers or read blogs or listen, or watch a lot of social media, it's full of ugliness and by and large. I look at the ugliness by and large and say, okay, we're talking about problems, whether they're social problems or economic problems or political problems. And in most cases, we solve those problems because we are exposing them. We're discussing them and we mitigate them. So what I truly worry about over the long run are things that we don't talk about. But so I get heartened that, you know, we as a society and with all my travels around the world, the beauty of the United States is, and that's the beauty of the United States. It is the democracy of thought, democracy of ideas, but also, you know, the whole foundation of free speech. I mean, a lot of it may be hateful or hurtful, but the reality is that's a process that over the long run, that, you know, we could see over hundreds of years, the United States is an absolute political mess. There's no change today. Like people tell me all the time, whether they're from a red state or blue state, it's never been worse. Well, that's not true. I mean, the United States was in much worse shape in the late 1960s with the Vietnam War. There was great divisions then. You go back and read the history of the United States. It is a mess. And so to me, this is the beauty of the country. We are a mess. We expose our messiness, but we move forward. And when you think about that, this is one of the reasons why we, as a country, are able to create incredible companies. Innovation, entrepreneurialism. Look at the two of us, where our journeys were, you know, and where we came from. You can't do that anywhere else in the world. And, you know, this is why this is an incredible place to be an entrepreneur, to work hard. And if you have something unique and meaningful that, you know, you can build your company into beyond your wildest imagination and dreams. But overall, we find solutions. If you go back to almost every crisis during our lifetimes, you know, after a period of time, the markets reassess itself and then start rallying again. And, you know, whether, I mean, I could go back to every part of my 49 years being in Wall Street now, that the optimists are the long-term winners. Now, in a short run, a pessimist can really win in the short run. But generally, there are very few pessimists know when to reverse their positions. Is there anything, though, that you see in today's landscape that gives you pause around that permanent optimism, like the national debt? Yes, our deficits are out of control. To put it in perspective, in the year 2000, after 223 years of the nation, the U.S. deficits were $8 trillion. Today, they're $36 plus trillion. We raised our deficits by $27 billion over the last $28 trillion, over the last 25 years. And a trillion every couple of months now. And now we're going at a rate of $2 to $3 trillion a year. 30% of our U.S. treasuries are financed by foreigners. And as other countries start developing their own capital markets as they grow, and as they are focusing on making their country great again, as they are focusing on maybe it's better to reinvest in our country than to diversify and investing in the United States, which that trend is starting to happen, it's going to be very costly for us to finance this debt. The only way we could get out of this problem is we have to grow the economy. We need to grow by 3% a year for the next 10 years. That's really hard. But if we unlock private capital, if we unlock the markets, we reduce permitting processes, if we accelerate depreciation, the amount of money that's sitting in bank accounts, I mean, money market funds are now over $12 trillion. The amount of money that's sitting, you know, earning a short-term return, but if we could get more and more of that money invested in real assets. And my feed to everybody here in the United States, but in every other country, when you give your money to a bank, you're a lender. Lenders make very little money. Over hundreds and thousands of years, the people who build wealth are owners of real assets. But I try to tell everybody, whether I'm in India or here in the United States or any other country, grow with your country. And so what I'm trying to tell all the Americans, we need to get more and more Americans to invest in real assets, whether it is in the stock market or whether it is in their own home ownership or other things. And I think it's really important. And it could start with $20 a week or whatever it takes to start building that. But I mean, an interesting point is getting back to just building up nest eggs. If you could earn an extra 50 basic points over 30 years, 50 basic points, it doesn't seem like that much. Your end pool of money is up 18% higher than if you didn't earn that extra 50 basic points. But getting back to the U.S. deficits, Peter, they're frightening. They're going to be absorbing more and more of our discretional spending. We're too dependent on foreign purchases. And when we had a presidential election last year and even today, nobody in Washington is really talking about it. They give lip service. And so getting back to my whole idea, we solve problems by exposing problems. We're not solving this problem. We're not talking about it. And both parties are guilty. I'm not picking at one person or other. The irresponsibility of our federal government to spend this type of money, $27 trillion over 25 years, this is a path that is unsustainable. Unless we grow our economy. And so we need to find ways of unlocking private capital, giving confidence to the $12 trillion of money sitting in the bank, giving them hope that, no, you could make a lot more money investing in the market over a long horizon. You're going to make a lot more money owning real assets of some sort. And if we could get more people to doing that, whether it is the amount of trillions of dollars we're going to need to digitize our economy with AI. The need to building power grids to find reliable, dispatchable energy, maybe that's nuclear or it's going to be gas. It's going to be, at the same time, focusing on new technologies, whether it's going to be solar or other forms, hydrogen. So all of this is in the mix. And so this is the opportunity. This is why I'm so excited about where BlackRock is and the opportunity we have in trying to bring these investments to the forefront so our investors can earn that type of return that they can have retirement during the dignity and decency. But we need to have every member of our government to wake up to the idea that these deficits are threatening our future. They're threatening the value of the dollar. Let's be clear, if we were not the country whose currency is the currency of the world, we would not be able to have these deficits. But because we are the currency for the world, we are accorded a privilege that no other country is accorded. We should not lose sight. It is a privilege. It is not a right. And I think too many men and women in Congress believe it's a right, not a privilege. And I think we're jeopardizing that right. And it's not permanent. And I think we get away with it because there's no alternative right now. But as we move towards more crypto strategies, more stablecoin, I was in Asia two weeks ago. And, you know, the countries are all talking about creating their own stablecoin because they're worried about the increased dominance of having a dollar stablecoin worldwide. So they're all going to start their own. Getting back to they're going to focus on their own economy and they're going to digitize and create their own stablecoin and digitization of their currency. So there are and, you know, and I do believe things like Bitcoin will play a big role in this, too. And I know, you know, our government is very in favor of this. We just had the Genius Act that was signed last week. But the reality is names. But but but if we don't handle this properly, we are going to lose this right. I think we've got to your point. We have a growth problem. And the other element is we have a spending problem which has got to get under control one way or another and totally absolute bipartisan disaster. And I talk to our clients all the time about what you just said earlier about being an owner versus a lender. There's a thousand investments, BlackRock's in every single one of them. End of the day, you're an owner, you're a lender and wealth is created. And don't be a lender. Don't be a lender. Lenders are for short term moments when you're when you're when you're less optimistic. A hundred percent. You know, you brought up cryptocurrency and your personal belief around this or comments on this have certainly evolved over the years. It did. So tell me, tell our audience what you thought in the beginning, what you think today, what's BlackRock doing? I didn't believe in it. Actually, in the early years, it was a domain of money launderers and thieves. Obviously, you know, if you were if you're in a corporation, you were held ransom with some type of code. You paid in Bitcoin. So I can tell you this still happens today. It's still have every six months. One of our clients is business. Someone hacks it and wants Bitcoin to so as a ransom. So I said that I said in 2017 on a panel sitting next to Jamie Dimon. Who Jamie still today is against it very much. But right around 2000, 2021, around Covid, when I had a little more time on my hand, I started talking to a person who is a huge believer in it. So it was me. I you know, the one thing I was throughout my 49 year career, I'm still a student and there are times I'm wrong. And so during this period of time, I brought in a bunch of different people, talk to them, learn more about it. And I remember one time I met this one woman who is providing illegal jobs for Afghani women. Women could not work with the Taliban, with the Taliban in control of Afghanistan. Women are prohibited to work. And this woman was trying to find a way to empower and employ women in Afghanistan. The Taliban controls the banking system. So there's not a chance that you could pay them. But she started having them code. They're all coders who are able to code for different companies out of Afghanistan. And they were being paid in Bitcoin. And so I started this journey of learning of different applications and why I studied why are people buying it? And much of it has to do with and gets back to our deficits. Many people own Bitcoin because they're frightened of the debasement of their other financial system, of their currency. Many people own Bitcoin because they're frightened of their security. 20 percent of all Bitcoin holders are Chinese. OK, then I don't you know, so you owe it to me. Bitcoin is digital gold. You own gold for the same reason. But it's even even more transportable because it's all you have authenticated ID and then you have all this stuff and you could move it around. And so around 2023, 24, I became a real believer in it. And then we took a very active role. And we used to bring in all these different people who were big believers in it, like Michael Saylor from MicroStrategies. I mean, Michael came to our office when the stock was in the teens. But he was a huge believer in it, transformed his company. I mean, I could just say all these different people came in and talked. And then we became, you know, we we became a leader in working with the SEC and in trying and trying to move forward in this. And fast forward now more than 18 months when we first started creating a Bitcoin ETF today. It's IBIT is 86 billion dollars. We're, you know, at least 40 percent of the market today. Our Ethereum ETF is now nine billion dollars. We are the collateral manager for Circle. And we believe that that stablecoin is going to be a major component of how economy will work. And Bitcoin is going to continue to be that alternative to gold. And if there's more debasement on currencies, whether it's a dollar debasement or other places, there's going to be more demand for Bitcoin. And if there's more global instability and you worry about your security, this is an asset that you're going to own. And so there's so I look at most of BlackRock's money that we manage, we manage money because we're hopeful. As I said, you own real and hard assets because you're hopeful that over a 30 year period of time, the compounding of those assets are going to be worth a lot more than being a lender. And time, you know, almost every period of time in our man's history that has paid off. And I look at Bitcoin as my hedge. It's a modest hedge compared to all the money we manage. But it is a, I believe it's legitimate and it can play a role, no different than tips. Why would you own a tip if you're in, if you're heavily oriented to fixed income? You own tips because you're worried about the value of fixed income portfolio, that inflation is going to rise and you're going to offset your fixed income portfolio by owning tips. I mean, they're just, these are just, you know, balancing, you know, a balancing asset to to fit into a whole portfolio. So if this is a fear based asset, let's call it that. What what is it about the market that concerns you the most when you look at the market today? The crypto market? No, just the overall market. Gosh, there's very little that I'm worried about in the overall market today. I mean, I, I mean, I hear the narrative, look, there are so few public, publicly traded companies. Cut in half, right? 8,000 to 4,000 or so. But I think that's a natural evolution. You know, when we bought BGI in 2009, most companies said you can't be over 10% of a portfolio. So that was only now 16 years ago. Today, BlackRock manages, in many cases, 100% of our clients portfolio. And so the whole evolution has changed. And I think we as consumers, but we as, you know, people in business, the most valuable asset we have is time. And if you believe that's only going to get more, more valuable, you're going to use fewer and fewer organizations to be part of your life or fewer and fewer retailers. And so if you take that, it should not be a surprise we went from 8,000 companies to 4,000 companies. That being said, the 4,000 companies are worth, you know, 3x of what the 8,000 companies were worth. So we're building more giants in every industry. I mean, I look at the success of Walmart. I mean, what Walmart has done alongside Amazon, but in the, you know, from a traditional retailer, Walmart has gone from strength to strength to strength. They are using AI more than any other retailer. And they understand their clients better than any other retailer by understanding what each client is buying, when they're buying it, shelf space, the whole idea. But there's a great example. They're so much more efficient. In 2004, BlackRock was public now for five years, but in 2004, I would say 90% of the public asset managers had a higher market cap in BlackRock in 2004. Today, all the public asset managers who trade public securities, the sum of them is not even worth half of BlackRock. And so, you know, you're seeing the scale operators, you're seeing it in the transformation in the RIA channel and what you're doing. I mean, we're seeing more concentration because scale provides us with more tools to help our clients. And so I'm not worried about the shrinkage of public companies. And look, most today, because there's so much private capital, private firms can stay private longer. Right. For sure. But that being said, in most cases, most private companies ultimately are going to go public because whether the founder or the leadership team wants to have a higher, you know, monetized somewhere. Or there might be a founder succession issue and all these issues. And so I'm very relaxed about that. But I do believe what's the magic about the U.S. economy is we more rapidly weed out the weak links and we're building stronger enterprises, better enterprises, more connected to their clients than ever before. I think that's completely true. I look at like when I talk to my clients, I go back to the 80s and say, remember all the restaurants in your neighborhood, 30, 40 of them, whatever there were, very few of them are still standing today. But the ones that struggled, they might have lasted five years, 10 years. Today, it's not uncommon for a restaurant to open up and be gone a month later or a year later. It's the same capitalist process. It's just moving so much more rapidly. And we're really moving more towards these winter. And for some people, it's very destabilizing. And I get it. And this is why we have so much populism in our country today, because there's a little more fear. And the AI and the technology change is going to eliminate a lot of white-collar jobs. At the same time, it's going to create a massive amount of highly paid blue-collar jobs. We are going to have a massive shortage of electricians. And AI electricians are paid about $150,000 a year. We're going to have shortages in so many different businesses right now. And so, this is why, yes, AI is going to shape the world. It's going to create a lot of uncertainty, because there are going to be some big winners and big losers. And this is why we need to talk about this stuff and help shape families and their children. Where should their careers go? But the one thing I would say to everybody who's listening, the one thing that AI is not going to change, is human touch. So, in reality, we're going to need more people who provide human touch than ever before, especially in an aging economy. We're going to need more nurses than we have today. So, in a world that's going to be more isolated, more tech-driven, the highest demand roles will be the people that are high emotional intelligence and able to deal with other people. Absolutely, across the board. More than ever. You've talked a lot about AI. What do you see AI's impact at BlackRock today and in the future? What do you think the big changes will be? Well, because of our scale, I mean, and because we have our analytical system called Aladdin, where many, many of our clients utilize and actually many of our competitors use it. We believed advanced data analytics were going to be an important component of who and what we are. In 2017, we created an AI lab and called it an AI lab at Stanford University, 2017, because we believe that the analytics, the algorithms associated with big data analysis is going to create a differentiated, you know, ideas to produce better net returns. And our systematic equity team has proven that. We believe that using better AI tools will create more efficiencies within the organization. I look at just BlackRock over the last five years. Our assets are up about almost 40%. Our headcount's up about five. And so we've created a lot of efficiencies with better analytics and data. And so to me, AI just creates better and better productivity and efficiency. And getting back to the United States and the 3% growth, the only way we're going to be doing that is through better productivity. And productivity is going to be heavily oriented towards the implementation of AI across all industries. Well, capitalism has been a big theme of this conversation. You've written extensively about it. Yep. How concerned are you, if at all, about the rise of socialism across the United States? I mean, we're sitting here in your backyard. New York, yeah. You've got a socialist that seems to be the lead for mayor. Do you see this as temporary because of inflation? Like, I see it as a reaction to inflation and what's happened since COVID. But what do you see it as? What's caused this? And how concerned are you about it, if at all? Well, I'm always concerned about extremism. Whether it's left-wing extremism or right-wing extremism. But I actually believe the extremism is something that we got to be focused on. But I think through this extremism, whether it's far-right extremism, far-left extremism, it brings both Americans to the center. And so, over time, I'm less worried. Getting back to the 1970s, the social protest was so vivid. The division between the men and families and the women who were in the military and fighting a war that a lot of Americans did not believe in. And the protesting. I mean, this is what America is all about. It is about, you know, you think about McCarthyism back in the 50s. And, you know, the fear of communism there. And all these different, you know, reactions. As I said, we're a messy country. But it's through the mess we glow. And we find solutions. Our job is to make America stronger. Our job, most importantly, is to make our $12.5 trillion of client money. To put it to good work, good use, and with great future opportunities. So, you know, we have to deal with everybody from the far-left to the far-right. But our job is to work with everybody and find solutions. And, you know, and importantly, as a fiduciary to each and every client and their money, our job is to find solutions. So, and that's who America is. We're a pretty divided country right in half. And, you know, it's all in the edges. But that's the beauty of America. Our job is to find solutions. And people do just listen to what they want. If you're on the right, you're reading the Wall Street Journal, watching Fox News. If you're on the left, you're reading the New York Times. You're watching CNN, MSNBC. You just hear what you want to hear all the time and diminish the other side's views all the time, unfortunately. Which is, which leads to skewed views. So what I do, I read five different newspapers almost every day. And I just, you know, because I want to see the journey of both sides. And, you know, and it's really remarkable to read the same, the same narrative of something that happened with a totally two different lenses. It's funny to read things that I was at and participated and you get two different, you know, interpretations that are far extreme. And unfortunately, that's where we are. But for us to be a fiduciary to our clients, we need to hear both sides. We need to work there, but we need to move beyond that. Yeah, it feels like you have to triangulate your way to the truth today. You know, over the course of this conversation, you know, you've met the president of the United States a month ago. You're meeting the governor of New York tomorrow. Last time I visited you in your office, you had a high-profile ambassador in right before me. I think I'm sitting right now with someone who has more behind closed doors meeting with more, some of the most powerful people across the globe. What is happening behind closed doors? What are the theme, the concerns that emerge or the narrative that emerges, the commonality that emerges from these conversations across the globe? Well, probably in the last few weeks, I've had four to five different heads of state conversations worldwide. And quite frankly, they all have the same desire. How do we make our great, our country better? And everybody has said, you know, you're being elected in every one of these democracies chiefly, and they're trying to make it better. You know, when I go to the Middle East, I mean, I see the heads of state there, and they're not necessarily full democracy, but they are really trying to make their citizens have a better future. So if you start with, they all have a common desire to broaden their economy, to broaden the success of the economy, to diversify their economy so they're not dependent on one industry or another. And so they're all, they all ask the same type of questions, by the way. And right now, a lot of questions are related to, you know, where are tariffs going? What does it mean? How can we play it? But I get back to every country and say, almost every major democracy in this world has huge deficit issues. And they have a lot of, and most of these democracies have aging populations. So this cannot end well unless we grow. And so I'm, you know, I'm very pragmatic. I'm willing to listen to everybody, but there is a common thread with every conversation you have with every country. How can we make our, you know, what can BlackRock do in helping us lift our country? How do we, how can we create better jobs? How do we create more certainty? You know, so our, you know, we're the largest retirement manager in the UK. Okay, we have a big social responsibility. We're the largest retirement manager of non-Japanese banks in Japan. I mean, I could go across the whole world, our role that we play in. And so as a fiduciary to each and every client, our job is to try to making sure that we're giving them the best advice. And it's all about focus, having them focus on the long term. It's not about a trade. It's not about the moment. It's not about the events of the week. It's not about a tweet, you know. And so there's a lot of common themes about how to grow and how to build. And as I said earlier, for the United States and all the major democracies right now, they have to find ways to grow, unlocking private capital. Now in the United States, that's happening faster than Europe. Europe's waking up to that idea. Japan is opening up to that. I mean, they doubled the size of their tax-exempt retirement account a year and a half ago. And that's no accident. You've seen this big rise in the Japanese stock market. Why? Because more Japanese are participating in it and they're investing in it. Instead of keeping their trillions of dollars or trillions of yen sitting in a bank account. Larry, one last question. What's your legacy? How do you want your kids to think of you 20, 30 years down the road? Well, my kids and my grandchildren, you know, that he was a nice man. That's probably the only, nothing more than that. I don't think my accomplishments are something that, that's less important. But was I there for them? Did I help them build out their lives and their future? Was I there to give them advice all the time? And to me, you know, providing a financial backstop is not how I want to be remembered. I want to be remembered that I was, you know, I gave them the tools to lead a good healthy life. At BlackRock, most importantly, my legacy has to be the next generation of leaders. So my whole idea is to leave at the top of my game, but to leave with leadership behind me that are doing the job better than I ever did. That would be the, that's the great legacy. On that note, thank you, Larry. Thank you.